Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt has been a part of cinema history for so many years now. Latest movies showed not only Cruise does NOT age, he just gets better and better! That helicopter jump, skyscraper climb oh my!

But recently, Ghost Protocol head cinematographer Robert Elswitt revealed the original ending that actually retired Ethan Hunt as an agent.

Elswitt stated that after helming the project, director Christopher McQuarrie made significant changes as the original ending was a bit "loose". Here's how it was supposed to go down in the first place:

"The original version of this movie was at the end of it Tom Cruise stops being Ethan Hunt the agent and becomes Ethan Hunt the Secretary. The whole version of this was they were gonna put another IMF Mission unit together with another actor—maybe it’s Jeremy Renner, who knows who it is—and they’re gonna go through this series of wild events, and at the end Tom gets to be the Secretary and a new agent takes over the franchise."

Jeremy Renner's William Brandt could have been the new agent while Ethan became Impossible Mission Force's lead.

This storyline probably turned out better as we are to have Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8 are set for release on July 23, 2021 and August 5, 2022.